Download File - JOHN J. HADDAD, Ph.D.

8 ◆ Christianity A SHORT GLOBAL HISTORY
resurrection gave hope to both rich and poor who had found their days
filled with little expectation or painful drudgery. Jesus was impressed
with a widow who gave her last penny at the temple; he belittled a rich
farmer who thought his crop was his to handle as he saw fit.
The New Testament says that Jesus wrote in sand, but we have no documents
from his hand. Information about him is limited yet more than we
have for many ancient figures. A few Roman historians knew about Christians
and a bit about Christos or Chrestos, as they named him. Most
Western scholars accept that we know much of what Aristotle taught
although the great manuscripts of his writings are not dated earlier than
about twelve hundred years after his death. Yet the collections of Jesus’
deeds and words, probably first written and compiled within a generation
or two of his death, come from people who believed in him, probably from
some who had lived alongside him. The New Testament contains pieces
completed by the end of the first century AD. Textual fragments of the
Christian Gospels have been dated to the second or even the first century
AD. Full manuscripts from the fourth century still exist. Even the most
ancient writings containing the teachings of Buddha are not dated as close
to his death as the Christian Gospels are to Jesus’ demise.
Whether the Christian Gospels included in the New Testament come
from the hands of his disciples or of some of their followers, the stories
depict that original band of twelve apostles in anything but a good or a
defensive light. They look like bumblers who seldom got the point on
their first try; they were both prejudiced toward others and driven by
their own self-interests. Unless the skeptic can make the case that the
stories represent a quite sophisticated hoax, the writings about Jesus
make a claim for their authenticity because they have the breath of real
people struggling to understand their leader. Tatian, a second-century AD
Syrian writer, constructed a single account of Jesus’ life called the Diatessaron,
‘from the four’, that attempted to remove the overlap and smooth
the differences he found in his sources. Successful in Syria and western
Persia (Iraq), it eventually lost out to the four Gospels despite their
warts. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), bishop of Constantinople,
insisted that in the main the four were in agreement. Their disagreements
only enhanced the authenticity of their stories. Had they always said the
same things in the same way, Christians’ opponents would have rightly
declared that the books had been cooked.
Nearly any reader of the Gospels finds Jesus to be an interesting
teacher and something of a prophet. Today fewer critics attack the tales